Telegram Raises $1.7 Billion in Initial Coin Offering

Telegram Group, Inc., the provider of the one of the most used encrypted messaging apps today which plans to build its own cryptocurrency, has increased the proceeds of its initial coin offering to $1.7 billion.

According to a regulatory filing, the company has raised an additional $850m from 94 investors, which follows the first tranche of the offering of $850 million raised from from 81 backers in February.
This represents the world’s largest initial offering and according to the filing, the issuers may pursue one or more subsequent offerings.

The funds will be used to build blockchain with its own cryptocurrency.

Led by Pavel Valerievich Durov, Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed. Users can use Telegram on all their devices at the same time, with messages syncing across any number of their phones, tablets or computers.

With Telegram, people can send messages, photos, videos and files of any type (doc, zip, mp3, etc), as well as create groups for up to 100,000 people or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences. They can write to phone contacts and find people by their usernames. As a result, Telegram is like SMS and email combined — and can take care of all your personal or business messaging needs. In addition to this, it supports end-to-end encrypted voice calls.